[lbo-talk] Poll of Top 5 Public Intellectuals! Vote For Chomsky!

[Dwayne Monroe]

Of course, I may be wrong but as I recall the order of things Hitchens' celebrity
amongst the Left began in earnest with the publication of his 1985 essay "The
Chorus and the Cassandra" in which he defended Chomsky against, specifically, the
charges that accrued during "l'affaire Faurisson" and more generally, the
scurrilous category of attack the Faurisson matter illustrated.

<http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/other/85-hitchens.html>

With what seemed to be a cocktail party, conversational ease (mixed with a fair
amount of 'great books you should read' erudition), Hitchens decisively slapped
the wide asses of the most virulently dishonest and anti-intellectual of the
Chomsky detractors  -- the ones who always seemed to go too far, not only
challenging his political views but walking several miles farther to question --
without the benefit of knowing what the hell they were talking about -- the
validity of his contributions to linguistics and cognitive science.

It was quite a performance; or so it seemed to my late teenage self at the time. 
I haven't re-read the piece in years and don't know what I'd think of it now.

...

Much of the dismay generated by the man's turn towards, not just the Right (many
people sought solace in a beatific vision of the US Air Force burning
"Islamo-fascists" out of their much discussed "caves" after 9/11), but a strange
and mindless servitude to power, regardless of the facts at hand, is caused, I
think, by the comparison of the Hitchens of the "The Chorus..." -- for many, the
only Hitchens they're really familiar with -- with the current iteration.

.d.